“Claire was sixteen when he was born,” Lauren said to the sink. “She was in the house. You can’t hide a baby from a sixteen-year-old. You can only ask her to join the lie and call it protection.”
“Did she?”
“She was a child. I was a child. Our parents were tired and proud and ashamed and they thought they were saving a future. Everybody agreed. That’s the worst part. It wasn’t a villain. It was a kitchen table and a plan.”
Jonah glanced at her and then back at Derek, as if checking whether he was allowed to keep the story. “I didn’t call her for a year. I finished high school. I worked at the marina and at a pizza place and I got good at being angry in a way that impressed nobody. Grandpa started forgetting the stove. Claire got him a stove with an automatic shutoff and he took it as an insult. Last month he fell. Not a dramatic fall. He just went down in the kitchen and was embarrassed and his hip is a question now. Claire called me. Then I called Lauren. I told her I was coming up here because I was done being a brother she visited. I took the bus. I got in at night. She picked me up and she cried in the car and she asked me not to come to the house.”
“And you agreed,” Derek said. He did not make it kind.
“I agreed for three days. Then I agreed again because she said you were good and Mason was little and she needed to find the words. Three weeks is a long time to find words you had twelve years to find. I know that. I stayed at her friend’s. Marisol. She was decent to me and she hated the arrangement, which made two of us. I got a shift under the table washing dishes for a week because I don’t like owing people sheets and eggs. I met Mason by accident. Lauren had him for the afternoon and the sitter canceled and she thought it would be an hour. He walked into the kitchen while I was saying something I should have kept until she was ready. I don’t know if she was ever going to be ready. That’s when I told her I would not be the secret in the back room of a friend of the family. Either she told you, or I got on a bus home and I told Mason the truth myself the next time I saw him, and I would see him, because I’m not disappearing so her marriage can keep its favorite story.”